Home sought for feral cats displaced by fire

SPRING VALLEY  An animal-rescue group volunteer is hoping to find a new home for a dozen feral cats living in the garage of a three-unit apartment complex damaged by a recent fire.

Josh Hirschmiller, a volunteer with East County Animal Rescue, said he’s been told by the owner that the building on Kenwood Drive near Gracia Paseo will soon be torn down, and he’s hoping to relocate the cats as a colony.

“My ideal solution is all of them in one place,” Hirschmiller said.

He said all the cats have been neutered, and he’s been feeding them nightly. A resident who had been renting an apartment in the building that was damaged by the fire had been feeding them.

“My ideal situation would be a property where I can put them for a month and then let them go. They would be fed in an enclosure,” he said. “I will supply the enclosure unless they have a barn they want to put them in.”

Keeping the cats confined for a month should allow them to become oriented to the location and have them regard it as their new home. Without such a confinement, he said, the cats will run off and possibly be hit by cars or eaten by coyotes.

“After a month we can let them go,” he said.

Hirschmiller said he doesn’t want to leave the cats to fend for themselves in the Spring Valley neighborhood because many neighbors have pit bulls and there also are coyotes in the area.

“The cats jump the fences looking for a new place to live and they get eaten up,” he said. “As they move to relocate, they are going to get killed. This (relocation) is the safest way.”

Investigators said the fire caused an estimated $350,000 in damage and was sparked by old electrical wiring in the ceiling.

Anyone interested in helping to relocate the cats should call Hirschmiller at (619) 540-4570.